The Socializers | culture change

We have the conversations, we need people to analyze and synthesize what customers are saying

admin June 8, 2011 No Comments

“We have the conversations now…we don’t need Nielsen…we don’t really even need some of these deep analytics anymore…we have the conversations” ~Jodee Rich, CEO, PeopleBrowsr

“You need someone who can read into the data and say “this is telling me…” @richmeyer

“There are way too many analytic solutions out there & not enough people to analyze the data and turn it into action.” @richmeyer

“Organizations need individuals/teams within to leverage analytics into actionable items that can help meet brand objectives.” @richmeyer

“A “spot-on” CSV of 100 Key Influencers w/social links + a summation of these Influencers’ latest messages/social objects + a graph of who follows them and who they follow.” @Nat_Hansen

“We helped (this brand) find 10,000 followers who REALLY loved them and their click through rate went up significantly…it (stories, conversations, and numbers) absolutely become dollars when it becomes what people are really thinking about us.” ~Jodee Rich, CEO, PeopleBrowsr

MANAGERS AT AD AGENCIES ARE MORE INTERESTED IN THEIR BUSINESS MODEL & MONEY VS. HOW PEOPLE FEEL: Putting a brand-oriented organization like an ad agency in charge of nurturing a community of people within social networks is a mistake. An ad agency’s business model is based on revenues earned from media. They create broadcast messaging for broadcast media. The growth of vibrant social communities is better done by those from WITHIN those same communities, individuals committed to the core values of whatever that particular circle lives for.

If a community is only nurtured for transactional purposes, its members interact differently than if the community has been formed around a passion, a shared interest. Good content-marketing is informed by deep insights derived from conversation snippets within social networks. And most brands and agencies are not staffed with the right people to discover such insights. They are smart but they are bound to their business model.

The best organization to build a social community consists of those who care about and have “grown up” within that community itself…whether it be the community OF THE BRAND ITSELF or a non-branded community that is GENRE-SPECIFIC (in which a particular brand tends to flourish). Additionally, those familiar with social networks and how to use social technologies are the best to train these community leaders. To sum up: Orient towards those who care about people as the ones to initiate AND grow a community within social networks.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IS A TOP PRIORITY IN COMMUNITY CREATION: A number of organizations I am working with now in Europe are dealing with this exact issue. The ad agency for these organizations has been in charge of informing the ethos of the customer-facing materials. But now, in both cases, it turns out that the budding communities forming around these brands need leadership and nurturing. And there is no-one managing the brand or on staff at the agency that truly cares about the quality of the community. The PRIMARY discussion is: how many Likes can we get AND how many of those Likes can we turn into dollars or euros? At the outset of growing social communities, such strong focus on growing Likes and turning Likes into dollars/euros can suffocate the organic growth of a circle of people simply coming together to share a common interest or passion. To sum up: Peter Ecomonomides of FelixBNI says, “social psychology is far more important than economics”.

SCALES OF CARE: I remember consulting to a large sales organization years ago in America. I worked with an I/O Psychologist to assess the 100 person staff within the organization as part of an HR project. The study yielded some interesting results. Of particular interest was the psychological make-up of the COO and the Director of Sales. The tests we were using showed, as one scale of measurement, an individual’s care for other humans…that is, how much concern someone had for another person and their feelings/needs. The COO and the Director of Sales scored 1 and 2 respectively on a 100 point scale, with 100 marking deep care for others. To sum up: Do NOT put Directors of Sales or CFOs in charge of policies related to social communities. This is the vicinity of those in Customer Experience and the customer journey.

Choosing Fun in relation to Key Influencers within the Interest Graph can be very effective. Check out this twitter campaign for a cell phone company in Turkey. Brilliant! Thanks to @helena_chari in Athens for turning me on to this!!

BE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC, NOT PRODUCT-CENTRIC: While it is true that not all COOs or Sales Directors globally might score in the same way, this example points to an important issue for those building social communities. Often the decision-makers in the room at enterprise-level organizations are the CFO (who influences the CEO) and leaders from the Sales division. On one level this makes sense since sales is the life-blood of most organizations and the CFO is the “dutch uncle” (ideally) who maintains efficiency and the books. But a CFO and a Director of Sales are NOT the right people to nurture a social community for a brand, nor to dictate how such a community ought to be created and populated. This is best done by individuals who understand customer-service, who care passionately about user-experience and who have a bias towards giving power to the customer in such forums. And that’s why large organizations globally are gearing more resources towards Chief Customer Officers vs. Chief Marketing Officers. See Harvard Business Review article on this subject here AND here.

STAFFING FOR CONVERSATION ANALYSIS: I recently interviewed a large interactive agency in a major European city. I was particularly interested in discovering to what extent the agency analyzed customer data for the purpose of deriving insight. In other words, aside from receiving metrics and analytics from a social monitoring solution, did the agency employ OR contract with individuals who studied conversations by influencers around a brand. And, if so, what training or background did those individuals have. It turned out that the tool the agency was using showed communities around interests related to a brand along with stats on those who occupied the communities BUT the agency had allocated no resources or staffing toward peering into the conversations. To sum up: agencies and brands MUST staff in relation to customer need vs. product need. Social communities are best served by those who understand the human heart.

ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATION AND STORYTELLING: Something very powerful emerges when one knows what others are interested in talking about. Consider for a moment how powerful it would be for that interactive agency to spend time looking at the last 100 tweets/status updates/blog posts/thread comments OF the top 100 online influencers around its customers’ products. And what if the person studying this messaging had a background in psychology, writing psychological assessments and/or in journalism, feature stories. Agencies MUST consider contracting with or employing such people to do exactly this task. The creativity that emerged from the focus groups of old is amplified in potential with so many conversation snippets now discoverable within social networks around ANY topic. A psychologically-aware storyteller who understands the power of mashing-up content IS the individual ALL agencies and brands should be sending headhunters to find. Non-branded Twitter communities created on-the-fly for research purposes can be very powerful scopes for those with a trained eye and a trained heart. To sum up: Agencies and brands MUST hire individuals or contract to organizations who specialize in community and conversation analysis. Storytellers are vital to community conception and creation.

GOOD QUESTIONS TO ASK: Interactive and ad/marketing agencies should be asking themselves the following questions:

1. Are we satisfied with our process for deriving insight, customer intelligence and stories from our current social monitoring solution?

2. How much time are we spending on conversation/community analysis at the outset of social marketing projects? And on-going?

3. Have we considered hiring individuals trained in psychology and journalism to (a) analyze conversations within social communities and (b) create sticky content from the insights derived from these conversations?

4. Have we realized the full potential of non-branded Twitter communities as a valuable resource in gaining customer insight, gaining competitive intelligence and in our storytelling processes?

CONVERSATION INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS AT SLIDESHARE by THE SOCIALIZERS

Conversation Analysis AND Insight. Nathaniel Hansen, CEO, The Socializers

View more presentations from The Socializers

RESOURCES:

Research.ly, a solution created by PeopleBrowsr, to create on-fly communities around ANY topic. This is an invaluable tool for market research and social community creation.

Copyblogger – a great resource for those who create content of all kinds.

Oxford Internet Institute Projects – this institute in the UK is deeply interested in the Hows and Whys of the Internet. The research they are doing is fantastic!

The Chief Customer Officer Council – The Chief Customer Officer Council is the first of its kind — a member-led peer-advisory network offering unparalleled insight into the critical issues facing CCOs.

WOMMA – Word of Mouth Marketing Organization – WOMMA is the premiere non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and advocating the discipline of credible word of mouth marketing, both offline and online.

Selling the value of Social Networks to the Silos

admin June 5, 2011 No Comments

“Wait a moment, here I have it. This: ‘Most men will not swim before they are able to.’ Is not that witty? Naturally, they won’t swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won’t think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.” ~Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO SWIM MUST TEACH: We live in times when mankind has bartered solid earth for water. Those who know how to swim, must swim and teach. And those that would survive must be willing to learn and adapt. Such is the case for those learning social networks. Social networks are an outer manifestation in the form of text, photos, video, news and music OF OUR inner lives. Whereas before we heard thoughts from another person over a telephone line or experienced a director’s vision on the television or silver screen, we now have an environment (social networks) where we live WITHIN a constant stream of thought, vision and communication. To speak plainly: those who can find business intelligence, set up on-the-fly networks and aggregate customers quickly WITHIN social networks provide value to traditional businesses seeking to enter these same networks.

THE MEDIUM HAS CHANGED: Sifting through this stream, filtering it, is the primary and initial task that those who work in social networks must do via social media monitoring and community management. And those who introduce corporations and brands to the use of social networks must simplify and translate all of the lexicon that has ballooned around social networks into an easy to grasp language. Many, like Peter Economides of FelixBNI, state firmly that nothing has changed EXCEPT the medium or channel. While this is very true, there is also the reality that a new medium often changes the user or participant. We communicate at the speed of thought now and our “PCs, the Internet, mobile phones, GPS have come together to enable a vast distributed data network of collective memory…a collective stream of intelligence” (PeopleBrowsr). To speak plainly: social networks now provide a new, faster means to create connections, sales and business relationships.

CONVINCING DUTCH UNCLES: So how does one convince a businessman in his 60’s who is used to using the telephone and maybe a fax machine to communicate…how does one convince such a man to use Facebook to see photos and read stories of his grandchildren, to see Twitter as a scope into powerful business intelligence, to view photos of family and peers at Flickr and video of family at YouTube? How does one convince him to look for the breaking news at Reddit or discover the latest market trends at StumbleUpon? How does one convince him to read what his competitors’ team is presenting at Slideshare or Scrib’d? How does one convince him to catch up with his granddaughter’s music at her Last.fm channel or to create his own radio station at Pandora and listen to this on the drive to work? How does one reveal that vital conversations related to the brands he founded are taking place within Disqus communities (communities built around the comment-threads from blogs)? How does one convince him that Wikipedia is a faster route to information on many subjects than Britannica? How does one convince him that Yelp will “save the night” in a new town if that top restaurant is fully booked? To speak plainly: there is a network for every market and many networks contain a slice devoted to specific markets. Use these free venues for connection to your customer and for making sales!

SELLING CRONIES ON SOCIAL NETWORKS: Selling the crustiest, saltiest critics on the power and speed of social networks is rooted in psychology. Changing anyone’s mind, accessing a heart, really depends upon getting to know that person. What motivates him or her? What goals does he or she have? Doing a little homework USING social networks PRIOR to such meetings is one route to engaging in a convincing conversation. When I know what 10 competitors to a brand are doing RIGHT NOW (social monitoring tools) and six months from now (Recorded Future), that can be a great conversation starter. When I know where 50 new clients/customers for a product or service are located and what they are saying, this can lead to some exciting plans for the corporation. When I can show what events led to a shift in consumer behavior that either helped or hurt a brand, that can lead to some important adjustments to the supply chain and perhaps product identity. When I create a simple infographic that visualizes EXACTLY where that gentleman’s customers are conversing in social networks, what they are saying, when they are saying it and to whom they are talking, well, we hope he will see pools of new business opportunity. Will this businessman want his regional sales teams to know about new businesses expected to enter an area during the next 3 years? How would the CEO of a major automaker like to see alliances, business relations, company affiliates or joint ventures related to top global automakers? To speak plainly: When normal business processes are augmented or enhanced by social network data, we can make informed and calculated decisions on where, to whom, when and how to sell online. More effectively, with less expense and faster response time!

TEACHING LEVERAGE: But the next part is sticky, in more ways than one. Because after this classic businessman has paid for market intelligence and a plan to access these pools of customers, his first action is often incorrect. He wants to blast these customers with the digital equivalent of direct-marketing mail pieces from a neighborhood souvlaki joint. He wants to buy TV ads and slap a Facebook icon at the end. He wants to get on the bullhorn and round ’em up to the lot for those shiny new vehicles. And so now we have to show him examples of how brands have leveraged the inexpensive and free social networks to harness the collective strength of employees and customers alike. We have to show him how Best Buy raised up its entire staff via TwelpForce and solved thousands of customer service issues via Twitter. We have to show him how NewEgg put up lots of videos to teach customers how to fix or use electronics purchased at their stores. We have to show him how Starbucks gave their customers a chance to change anything about the stores or products or service through My Starbucks Idea. And even if we heard about these great methods of leveraging social networks years ago at conferences or through friends running those social communities, we have to keep telling the story because it is still so new to so many. Especially the crusty cronies. To speak plainly: Do not assume when selling social network ideas to CEOs that he/she has seen or “gets” what you are talking about. Spell it out WITH examples that include simple math and clear lists of benefits.

SELLING COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT AND CONTENT-MARKETING TO MARKETING MANAGERS: Another tough sell is convincing the Marketing Manager and the General Manager that a new position of Community Manager or Social Media Manager WITHIN the corporation is essential. And that this person will be creating LOTS of regular content and engaging in relationship with the customers and stakeholders of the brand. As Jeremiah Owyang, of Altimeter Group, says, “Agencies should teach their clients how to ‘fish’ rather than do it for them as strategic advisors.” Or as Steve Woodruff writes, “The companies who advance with real personality in their social media endeavors will likely do best.” Content and relationship that works in social networks is born from customers who are passionate about the brand and a Community Manager or Social Media Manager who takes this content and distributes it throughout the social networks to the advantage of BOTH the customer and the brand. Read more on Great Community Management in this interview with Eleftherios Hatziioannou, former Social Media Manager at Mercedes-Benz Global and current Social Media Director at s.Oliver.

It all goes back to psychology and knowing what each person WITHIN the organization wants, what they need, and what the company is ready for now. And then showing how some simple first steps involving Listening, Planning and Executing can lead to great things. As Peter Economides of FelixBNI writes, “It’s about social psychology, not economics.”

A FEW GREAT TWEETS TO CONSIDER:

“You need someone who can read into the data and say “this is telling me…” ” richmeyer

There are way too many analytic solutions out there & not enough people to analyze the data and turn it into actionable data. richmeyer

Organizations need individuals/teams within to leverage analytics into actionable items that can help meet brand objectives. richmeyer

A “spot-on” CSV of 100 Key Influencers w/social links + a summation of these Influencers’ latest messages + a graph of who follows them. Nat_Hansen

The World Wide Mind

admin May 6, 2011 No Comments

The world is made of stories, not of atoms. – Rukeyser

THE PRISM OF STORIES: Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism is the “eye in the sky” at this time. If one wants to peer into the World Wide Mind, no better microscope is needed than the Conversation Prism. The networks and social sites within this Prism are both social and interest focused. The Prism is a living image that pulsates with our conversations, relationships and potential. And our mysteries.

THE MYSTERIES WITHIN THE PRISM: If one peers deep enough through the Conversation Prism, the resulting transparencies AND mysteries are truly profound for the individual, the community and humanity itself. In fact, one finds that transparencies (what is revealed) tend to invoke even deeper mysteries. In the words of the great and current mathematician, Grigori Perelman, “Emptiness is everywhere and it can be calculated, which gives us a great opportunity.” It could be said that the white space, the “dark matter”, the shadows within AND between the social properties in the prism offer the MOST potential. Tools like Research.ly and Recorded Future are helping humanity plumb these seemingly “empty” spaces.

THE HUES OF OUR GLOBAL MIND: I have identified one property from each shade of the Prism. These are first layers of an onion: the conscious level of our World Wide Mind, our collective psyche. The next layers are found through the conversations discovered when one searches one’s interests, customers, competitors and questions WITHIN the World Wide Mind.

QUESTIONS DEVELOPERS SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES: Developers should ask themselves what new apps, new social properties and new functionalities lie BETWEEN these existing social properties. Which of these social properties should “mate” one another? What does a conversation between Quora and LinkedIn sound like? What does a love affair between Technorati and Disqus look like? Are there categories that have yet to emerge? Can the Prism be even more finely divided?

SOCIAL BOOKMARKS: STUMBLE-UPON presents only web sites suggested by other like-minded Stumblers. Think: Bookmark. Not all those who wander are lost. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

COMMENT AND REPUTATION: DISQUS builds active communities from comments at your website, blog or web portal. Think: Debates & Innovation via Conversation.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it. ~Joseph Joubert

WISDOM OF THE CROWDS: REDDIT is a source for what’s new and popular on the web. User’s vote content up and down. Think: Democracy. Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. ~George Bernard Shaw

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS: QUORA is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. Think: Question Answered! Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much. ~Francis Bacon

COLLABORATION: BASECAMP is the leading web-based project management & collaboration tool. To-dos, files, messages, schedules, & milestones. Think: TeamWork. Unity is strength…when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved. ~Mattie Stepanek

SOCIAL COMMERCE: GROUPON negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. Think: Coupons. A History of Coupons Infographic. -http://bit.ly/history_of_coupons A History of Groupon. –http://bit.ly/history_of_Groupon

BLOG PLATFORMS: POSTEROUS lets you post things online fast using email. You can attach any type of file & POSTEROUS posts it to your POSTEROUS blog & social properties along with the text of your email. Think: Writers and Authors. It’s not what happens to people on the page; it’s about what happens to a reader in his heart and mind. ~Gordon Lish

BLOGS/CONVERSATIONS: TECHNORATI tracks the authority and influence of blogs AND provides a comprehensive & current index of who & what is most popular in the Blogosphere. Think: Bestselling Authors. One of the biggest challenges is how do you make that content more easily discoverable, easily consumable, easily digestible. ~Fortune Tech

SOCIAL CURATION: PAPER.LI organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Think: Journalism. Curation itself isn’t new; it’s just the way that some of us are doing it online that’s fairly new. The tools have evolved, but the goal of capturing a story and turning people’s attention to it isn’t. ~Andy Carvin (http://twitter.com/#!/acarvin)

SOCIAL CURATION 2: SPOT.US enables the public to commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting. Think: Journalism. We no longer look for news, it finds us. ~Lee Mikles

STREAMS: TWITTER – The ultimate source of Interest-related information. Everything and anything is being messaged about 24/7 here. TWITTER is THE golden key to discovering INFLUENCERS. Think: Giant Rivers of Information. Twitter is a tool for “anarchic learning and peer support”. ~John Davitt

NICHEWORKING: YAMMER is a tool for making companies & organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: What are you working on? Think: Walkie-Talkies in The Factory. Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. ~Yammer HQ

DIY + CUSTOM SOCIAL NETWORKS: JIVE is THE social business solution delivering features of popular social networking, community, collaboration, and content management software in a single highly secure enterprise platform. Think: Social Business. Business Process Management (BPM). Jive enables businesses to engage with their employees and create environments where ideas can be shared, knowledge can be shared, and expertise can be shared, to create efficiencies and help unlock value. What’s missing is businesses understanding how to organize for that collaboration to occur, and how to integrate those tools to allow collaboration. ~Jeff Dachis, Founder and CEO, Dachis Group

SOCIAL PHONES: SKYPE is a software application that allows users to make voice calls and chats over the Internet. Group calls, file-sharing also. Think: Telephone
The acceleration of Skype. http://bit.ly/skype_stats2011

SOCIAL NETWORKS: FACEBOOK is THE BIG-ONE. You dream how you want to do it and you can do it here via a dizzying array of apps and methods of communicating. Think: The Ocean/Universe. There’s lots of stuff none of us have ever seen before. That’s good in some ways, but limiting in other ways. ~Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook

LISTENING & TARGETING: RESEARCH.LY allows users to build “on-the-fly” communities based around any interest. Non-branded Interest-Graphs built with RESEARCH.LY provide one of the BEST sources of real-time collective intelligence. Think: Market Research/Focus Groups
Jodee Rich, Founder and CEO of PeopleBrowsr, talks about Research.ly – http://bit.ly/about_researchly_2011

BUSINESS NETWORKING: LINKEDIN is a networking tool to find connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Think: Career Building/Networking with Colleagues. See Twitter and Quora as golden keys to LinkedIn. Data will be the platform of the next era of the web, of Web 3.0. This is where some massive innovation will happen that will transform our lives. ~LinkedIn Founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman

ATTENTION/COMMUNICATIONS DASHBOARDS: HOOTSUITE is a web and mobile social media dashboard that helps individuals and organizations spread messages, monitor conversations and track results across multiple networks including Twitter and Facebook. Think: Thread & Needle (this is a tool for “knitting” communities). “HootSuite was created at a digital agency called Invoke where we experienced the problem of managing multiple social accounts on multiple networks for multiple clients,” said Community Marketing Director Dave Olson. “So we set out to solve this problem elegantly. We created a comprehensive social media dashboard allowing you to manage multiple networks & profiles from one place, plus share access with teams without compromising security.”

REVIEWS & RATINGS: YELP is a hyper-local search network and app where you find restaurants, hotels, bars and TONS of other types of businesses. Think: Reviews.
How Yelp got its name from the CEO: http://b.qr.ae/yelp_name

LOCATION: FOURSQUARE gives you & your friends new ways to explore your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things. Think: Social Compass.
What do users want in a location-based app? http://b.qr.ae/users_locationbased_apps

VIDEO: YOUTUBE is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States. Also the world’s 2nd largest search-engine. Think: TV. YouTube to spend $100 million on TV shows. Plans to create online TV ‘channels’. http://bit.ly/YouTube_TV_100milliondollars

sCRM: SALESFORCE is a collaboration suite for the enterprise to connect and share information securely in real-time. Think: CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Why did Salesforce.com succeed? http://b.qr.ae/salesforce_success2011

DOCUMENTS & CONTENT: SLIDESHARE is an online slide hosting service. Users can upload files in the many file formats. It is also amongst the World’s Top 10 tools for education & e-learning. Think: PowerPoints. White Papers. Dissertations. Professional Writing.
How to Maximize the Value of Slideshare for your business? http://bit.ly/maximize_value_of_slideshare2011

EVENTS: MEETUP helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings & form offline clubs in local communities  around the world. Think: Circles of Interest. Mapping the genome of groups may help us understand ourselves as we behave within a broader collective. ~http://bit.ly/the_value_of_groups

MUSIC: LAST.FM lets you effortlessly keep a record of what you listen to from any player. Based on your taste,  Last.fm recommends you more music and concerts!Think: Music Community/Social Radio. THE social property that allows one to mine the subconscious psyche of the community via music discovery. There is so MUCH hidden gold here in this endless and tapestried symphony of artists. ~Ladydust

WIKI: WIKIPEDIA is a free encyclopedia built collaboratively using wiki software. Think: Encyclopedia. A history of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

VIRTUAL WORLDS: WORLD OF WARCRAFT is currently the world’s most-subscribed Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with more than 12 million subscribers as of October, 2010. Think: Dungeons & Dragons morphing into actual economies and battlegrounds. Virtual Currencies. Virtual World Master List (flipped sideways so download this PDF and rotate clockwise: https://thesocializers.com/VW_masterlist.pdf)

LIVECASTING: USTREAM allows you to broadcast video LIVE to the world from a computer, mobile or iPhone in minutes, or watch millions of live OR pre-recorded shows. Think: Social TV. Social TV platforms and research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_television + http://bit.ly/future_of_socialTV_report2011

PHOTO: FLICKR is the largest and best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Think: Photo Communities. About image retrieval via tags – http://imageclef.org/2011

RESOURCES: The demographics and statistics on useage of specific social networks 2011 report by Ignite Social.

Social Intelligence reveals the Heart of a Business

admin April 30, 2011 No Comments

The heart and the mind are the true lenses of the camera. ~Yousuf Karsh

Business Intelligence consists of data, insights and strategic recommendations related to customers, competitors and markets. Such intelligence is derived by teams using best-practice research methodologies and technologies – it is both art and science. Exemplary business intelligence ALSO peers into shadow (what is unknown about one’s own self, one’s own business), into the heart of the matter (the essential nature of the business identity), and can deliver business initiatives related to these insights.

Intelligence projects should not only serve the stated company mission BUT speak to (and reveal potential within) the human situation at the company headquarters and branches. Satisfying insight into the human situations BEHIND a business facilitates fantastic evolution and progress. Depth of insight and revelation of the volume of conversation around these “hidden heart-landscapes” is the gas pedal of social revolutions and community growth.

SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE DELIVERABLES:

(a) a report that reveals the past, current and rising top influencers within social networks in chosen verticals,
(b) a graph of connections between these visible social influencers to decision-makers not active in social networks,
(c) insights on the past, current and future activities of BOTH entities. As an example, blending Interest-Graph discovery via Research.ly WITH findings in Recorded Future will yield excellent insights.

WHAT LANDSCAPE DO WE SURVEY: We survey properties identified to be relevant to the brand or entity in the social universe.

SOLUTIONS USED TO SURVEY THIS LANDSCAPE: We blend research using these tools and these tools.

HEART INTELLIGENCE: True heart-intelligence gives us a story. We start with spreadsheets and end with punchy tales that act as guides. The essential deliverable of Heart-Intelligence Projects consists of telling stories BASED UPON past, current and future content. Future content is discoverable using tools like Recorded Future. Past and current content is discoverable through a multitude of very efficient social monitoring solutions.

SOCIAL STORIES: The social objects/signals (tweets, status updates, apps, content) that our customer and competitor (object of study) has uploaded provide the content for story-telling. And these stories dictate who we pick up the phone to call, who we send an email to, and what we decide to sell or publish. The power of story for businesses is both compass and vessel. We see our customer and competitor AND we create the craft into sales with content derived from our research.